


Retcon

by TwinEnigma



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, OR IS IT, Paradox, Pre-Episode: The Day of the Doctor, Time War, Time War Angst, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1304671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinEnigma/pseuds/TwinEnigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Time War rages, the Valeyard feels like he's going completely mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retcon

It starts in his dreams. He does not sleep and dreams even less, but when he does, he remembers. Usually, it's about his time, his companions lost, and how he loathes that naive, arrogant man he used to be a part of. Every now and again, he catches a glimpse of gold fire, of the curving lips of a woman he can't place, and fragments of a resounding emptiness that causes him to wake, gasping for breath and horrified. Slowly over a period of years, these fragments grow in length and number, as places he's never remembered and faces he doesn't know encroach upon his sparse dreams.

All around the Panopticon he hears rumors of war, of the Daleks growing in strength. He doesn't remember this happening and it bothers him. Yet, he keeps quiet, does his job, and keeps his head down, lest they figure out the Keeper of the Matrix isn't quite what he appears to be.

The night before the war starts in full, he dreams he is standing before Davros in the belly of a Dalek ship and he can hear the madman proudly screaming his triumph, his horrifying creation, the Reality Bomb. He wakes screaming, the faces and names of companions he's never known burning in his brain.

Not long after, he watches as an uncharacteristically solemn Doctor finally returns to lead their people to war and he thinks this should not be happening, that none of this is how he remembers it to be. 

Time is changing and it frightens him.

The glimpses come to him in his waking hours now, stronger than ever. Bit by bit, he feels his memories being chewed up by the War and replaced with these fragmentary horrors of a future gone horribly wrong. He's losing himself in great big chunks and being replaced by something he doesn't know and doesn't understand and it's terrifying. He feels like he's going completely mad.

It isn't until Arcadia that he sees the Doctor again and when he does, he punches him square in _that_ face, the one that makes his gut churn for reasons he is only barely starting to comprehend. The strike bowls the Doctor over and he stands, shaking with fear and rage as he looks down at that worn, weary face that is both young and old and neither all at once. Oh god and that leather jacket he is wearing... he remembers that and Rose and Jack and no, no, no, _no_...

Around them, the war rages heedlessly on.

"Why?" he screams, because he can hear them all in the back of his head, dying and never dying, an unending burning chorus, and he can _feel_ the ache of their looming absence, of echoing silence thrumming through him in a tidal wave of foreboding awareness of the inevitable outcome he _can't remember happening_. Over and over, he screams that word until at last he sinks to his knees and begins to sob in earnest.

"What's wrong with him?" the soldier next to him asks, lowering his rifle.

"Oh! Oh no, oh _no!_ " the Doctor says in dawning horror. "Oh Valeyard, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He cries harder because he's said that too, when he was skinny and rude and not ginger and can't change anything. It hurts so much, so very much, and this is not how it's supposed to be, not at all. It's all wrong. Everything is wrong. Gallifrey isn't supposed to _burn_.

The Doctor gathers him in an embrace, rocking him as he remembers rocking his child and his grandchild and whispering soothing words of Gallifreyan nonsense as the gun presses into his ribcage.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be," he whispers.

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry, so very sorry," the Doctor tells him, but hesitates in pulling the trigger.

"You always were too soft," he says and presses the Doctor's finger down.

**Author's Note:**

> Back in early 2010, I wrote the original version of this as a one shot with the Valeyard being affected by the Time War and running into the Eighth Doctor. Now, post-Day of the Doctor, I went back to touch it up a bit and it was actually very easy to adapt it for the War Doctor instead of Eight - the story is even stronger for it in more than one place! There are, however, a few differences between the versions - in the original, the Doctor was still traveling with an unnamed companion and it was the companion who was wearing the leather jacket that would become Nine's; also, the Valeyard doesn't specifically react to Eight's face, so much as his person.
> 
> Some of the nuances of the story have a much different tone in light of the Day of the Doctor. In the original, the Valeyard's parting words are a final jab at the person the Doctor is, but in the context of the Day of the Doctor, they (and the Doctor's inability to pull the trigger) now also read as foreshadowing that the War Doctor will not be able to use the Moment. Others, such as the fact that the Valeyard's timeline overlaps with Doctor's and muddies his memories, I took the opportunity to make a little more clear.
> 
> And yeah, I'm aware that I just retconned a fanfiction named Retcon, which is about retconning timelines that are implied to be inevitable fixed timelines to characters who are totally unaware of that fact. It's positively delicious.


End file.
